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In this video the guy talking mentions that when empires fall. Governance tends to become more local and smallscale(warlords, feudal lords etc) because threats tend to become smallscale and local. And local lords can protect the pesants better. We can also see that all Empires fall.

Looking at what's going on in the EU and US right now, I can't help wondering, would this trend apply to the EU or USA? Can we make any other assumptions of what would happen based on historical data?

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Welcome to the site! This is a huge question, probably too big to be answered well. I'd suggest breaking it up into two (or more) smaller questions. – Joe May 24 '12 at 18:59
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I know we don't get enough questions here to be very aggressive about looking for dups, but I'm nominating this as one because my answer to this question would be exactly the same as the answer I just wrote to history.stackexchange.com/questions/2162/fall-of-empires – T.E.D.♦ May 24 '12 at 22:10
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I actually think this question is better formulated than the duplicate question This question has more focus onto the similarities, whereas the other question is huge and too broad to get a single correct answer. – Hendrik May 25 '12 at 9:37
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@Hendrik - I agree. I'll flag it. Hopefuly a moderator can merge the other question into this one? I've seen that done on stackoverflow. – T.E.D.♦ May 25 '12 at 12:04
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Looks more like alternate history or forecasting to me. History can tell you what happened when the British Empire fell, when the Roman Empire retreated, when the USSR fell, when the Arab empire fell. Each fell for a different reason, and each had a different effect on the world. Forecasting, a highly inaccurate science, will probably tell you what most people think would happen when (if) US or EU were to fall. – Monster Truck May 26 '12 at 9:33
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Inherent in your question it seems to me is the thesis that all Empires fall for pretty much the same reasons. I don't think that's right at all. Empires by their very nature are exceptional things, and thus inherently unstable in the long run.

I think the Anna Karenina principle applies to societies as well as families: Successful societies are all alike; every failed society fails in its own way. In other words, a whole lot of things have to go right, and keep going right, for a very successful society to stay that way.

So you could maybe come up with a grand unified theory for how they come into existence, but not for how they fall.

As fate would have it, while I'm typing this answer, Jared Diamond is on NPR delivering his critique of a new book on exactly this topic. The book is Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Diamond was fairly critical, but still you might consider checking it out. Otherwise, you could consider reading his own book on the subject: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

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This is really not the answer to my question, but rather the other one you answred with this text. Empires may fall for different reasons, but regardless of that they might fill some similar purposes... – Kristoffer Nolgren May 25 '12 at 15:18
@KristofferNolgren - I'll admit it needs some editing now (I'm working out exactly how). However, the basic point will still be that every collapse is different. Some are spectacular, some slow, and some just transform into something else. So there's no real way to give a global answer. JD's book is still a good reference, as he goes over at least a half dozen societal collapses. – T.E.D.♦ May 25 '12 at 15:38
Sweet i'll look in to it. Mayybe I should rephrace my question all together... – Kristoffer Nolgren May 25 '12 at 15:50
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My suggestion is to read what Nassim Nicholas Taleb has to say about Black Swan events and fragility. The idea expressed in the video you mentioned is an example of this. As empires get larger, they usually become more fragile and thus vulnerable to the "Black Swan" while smaller, simpler, units typically are less vulnerable to these unexpected events.

Taleb notes that there are ways to avoid fragility, in business and government. He also thinks that our system is on the edge of collapse. You can take his ideas and see how they apply when a complex society fails.

As T.E.D. noted, the reasons for a collapse and the results are usually quite different on the surface. However, when you start examining these events, you'll find some kind of fragility was at the core.

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